Ever since the Philippines started automating the elections, voters have become familiar with the Precinct Count Optical Scanner (PCOS) machines. This year, the Commission on Election (COMELEC) is procuring a brand new system, the Fully Automated System with Transparency Audit and Count (FASTrAC). This is targetted for the 2025 National and Local Elections. Personally, I hope that it is not too late - as I have experienced delays in the election process with the COMELEC claiming that there's no other choice but to use the old SMARTMATIC machines.
The FASTrAC Terms of Reference (TOR), and other related documents, are available to the public at the COMELEC's website. I took the liberty of downloading and scanning through the TOR and, whilst it looks sound, it left me with some questions.
First question is why isn't the COMELEC utilizing the voters' biometric data, which they collect during registration, to ensure that voters can only vote ONCE in ONE designated precinct (no flying voters)? The TOR has no mention of biometric or fingerprint, which means that the machine will not be equipped with the biometric scanner, nor will it securely store the mathematical representation of the biometric data on the machine. Imagine utilizing the biometrics of authorized personnel when logging in on the machine instead of a username, password and the USB hardware key? I do not know why COMELEC has wasted this opportunity to fully use the data they have collected. If COMELEC is not employing voters' biometric data, then voters should be able to request that their biometric data be deleted from the COMELEC database.
Second question is why allow Commercial/Customer Off The Shelf (COTS) operating system instead of ensuring that the full software stack of the machine can be audited completely by using free, open source software (FOSS), like Linux? Microsoft Windows is an example of COTS, but it is NOT the only example out there btw. Will Microsoft allow Filipino code reviewers to view the entire Windows source code? Surely eight (8) months (the duration COMELEC set for the source code review) is not enough to review the entire software stack, OS and AES. Unfortunately, the source code review is limited only to the Automated Election System (AES) software. Why? I mean, the operating system (OS) is not 100% free of vulnerabilities, and the software running on top of it might be accurate, but a vulnerability in the OS can be used as a vector to manipulate data prior to transmission. I think there is a disconnect here somewhere.
Finally, why is there no concern about hardware vulnerabilities. The machine is a computer. Computers are known to have vulnerabilities both in HARDWARE and SOFTWARE. For the past several months, we have Intel and AMD processors being exposed with vulnerabilities. Shouldn't the COMELEC consider that these vulnerabilities are fixed by mentioning it in the TOR?
Anyway, I am excited to see what the new FASTrAC will bring us, despite these questions. I do hope, however, that during the pre-bid, these questions can be addressed by incorporating the answers in the bid bulletin. Let's just hope that during the implementation of the AES, we'd see more transparency.